GROOMS TELL ALL:INSIDE THE MIND OF A MAN

Everyone knows that the wedding day is all about the bride. The groom? He’s just the guy in the tux. They don’t sing “Here comes the groom” at the beginning of weddings, do they?

That’s how the old stereotypes go, anyway. Not that there isn’t some truth hidden in the cliché. Many women grow up dreaming of their magical wedding day, when they’re swept into marital bliss by Mr. Right. And, of course, their hair is perfect and they’re wearing a killer Vera Wang gown. Most guys, on the other hand, grow up dreaming about the honeymoon and playing ball with their kids.

The truth about weddings lies somewhere between the typecast Bridezilla and the get-me-to-the-church-on-time groom. Women may well care more about the details, but men are hardly insensitive to the importance of the day. Many grooms, whether it’s commonly known or not, help in the planning. Don’t believe it? Here are three grooms who were involved, albeit in varying degrees of participation.

The Bit Player

First, there was the excitement. Next came the calm. Then the chaos started.

Because Jon Kirch proposed to Jamie Myers on December 23, 2003, to marry him there was an inevitable post-engagement lull. After all, the holidays take precedent over practically anything, so the opportunity to make wedding plans was limited by the year-end festivities. After New Year’s Day, however, it all started.

“As soon as that ended, we were booking [DJs] and doing everything,” says Kirch, a graduate student at the University of Delaware who also works for the Delaware General Assembly.

Well, maybe not “we.” Kirch admits he was “as active a participant as I was allowed to be. I tried not to get involved. I wasn’t allowed.”

He isn’t disappointed so much as amused. When he and Jamie married on January 7, 2006, he wasn’t much of a party planner. So he let the professionals—his fiancé and her mother—handle the heavy lifting. And that was just fine with him.

“She would tell me I had to go to a certain place at such-and-such a time, and I would say, ‘Okay, great,’” Kirch says. “I know that my sense of style is inferior to that of most women. Don’t ask me to do that kind of stuff. I’ll mess it up.” Kirch applied his hands-off approach even down the homestretch. Yes, there were details, and the stress was mounting. But he was cool, calm and collected. “I tried not to get involved too much,” he says.

As the wedding approached, Kirch began to worry a bit, not about the flowers or the music, but about the whole process. He admits to being “freaked out” a little, since he takes marriage “very seriously.” Once he got over his jitters, Kirch spent the day cleaning up and reflecting on the gravitas of the day.

He and Jamie married at 1 p.m. The reception and post-party lasted until 2 a.m. Kirch may not have been too involved in planning the day, but he absolutely enjoyed himself.

“It definitely exceeded my expectations,” he says. “It was an amazing day. I had a blast. Everybody got along so well. We had an awesome time, and everybody who came had fun, too.”

Down to the Minute

Mike Wilson works for the U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland, so he knows how to keep things in line and running efficiently. Even so, he and his wife, Sarah, had a few last-minute crises to prevent.

“I definitely looked at things from more of a practical viewpoint,” Wilson says. “My wife was no different than most brides. She wanted a fairy-tale wedding. My desire was to have everything come together.”

There was plenty of stress as the day approached. While their reception site, the Goodstay Center on the University of Delaware’s Wilmington campus, provided a wedding planner, there was still plenty to do. “It didn’t go smoothly at all,” Wilson says. “There was quite a bit to coordinate. It was quite a headache.”

One thing no one could anticipate, or coordinate, was the weather. The couple planned to wed outside amidst beautiful gardens, but poor weather could have forced them indoors—a situation no one wanted. The uncertainty kept the couple on edge for days. Fortunately, the fates complied, and the weather for their 5 p.m. ceremony was a mild—and dry—70 degrees. In the end, everything came together quite well. The couple enjoyed a serene day and a bounty of good friends and wishes.

“I think we both enjoyed our wedding very much,” Wilson says. “There were only a couple minor problems. I think we were very fortunate to have everything work out like it did. I’ve been to weddings where things go wrong, the bride panics and makes it worse.”

The Long Haul

Richard Normington still blames Melissa Rice for his bad grades in Spanish class at Dover High School—not that it’s her fault. Had he worked up the courage to ask her out sooner, he wouldn’t have spent countless hours mooning over her from afar and would have learned more Español.

Normington eventually got it together, and 12 years later, he and Melissa wed in Dover. Sounding like the moonstruck teenager who couldn’t keep his eyes off his classmate, Normington credits his wife for the wedding’s smooth operation. “Thank God for women,” he says, laughing.

The fact that Normington and Melissa dated for 11 years before he popped the question was a big factor in the wedding’s trouble-free status. “[A hassle-free wedding day] couldn’t have happened any other way,” Normington says. Not that he was an overactive participant in the planning process. He showed up when he was supposed to, gave opinions when (infrequently) asked, and followed orders when expected. “I definitely attempted to go to every session with the florist, etc.,” he says. “We tackled the wedding together.”

As the day approached, Normington was amazed at how seamlessly the details came together. Of course, he didn’t see Melissa’s feet churning below the surface.

One of the larger concerns was the bridal party, which checked in at a whopping 16 people, not counting the bride and groom. But even with such an unwieldy aggregation of friends and family, there was only one minor snafu. On the wedding day, one of Normington’s future brothers-in-law had to race back to his house to get the correct vest. Other than that, the day was trouble free.

“We enjoyed ourselves as much as possible on our wedding day,” he says. “I do see the day as magical. There was a lot of legwork done to get it together. The fact that we did it on our own, and it went smoothly, makes the 12 years prior to our marriage come together.”